E084 - You’re Not Lazy, Your Brain is Just F*CKED (How to Fully Reset) | Heba Ali

44:16And we're saying this indirectly with the advertisements, with the commercials, with the celebrities that we get on board for certain campaigns. There's a psychology game behind all of this. Maybe because I majored in psychology, I know it, or maybe because my genetics, I have a higher conscientiousness than most people, but it's so easy to see through. And I think I want, like, a lot of what I do online is to make people aware, number one. Awareness is a big part of my programming. You have to be aware of yourself in the outer world. Making people aware that not everybody that goes online and cries and says, like, Like, this is my story and this and that really cares about your well-being.

44:55There's a manipulation happening already on social media. So from the creator point of view, from the huge corporations, and then also from the people running this app like Silicon Valley, Facebook, Instagram, they don't care about your well-being at all. Like, if they did, they would take out the manipulative engine behind Instagram and they would just make Instagram a subscription-based where companies can pay and people can pay. like youtube i think is a much better option than instagram because yeah when you go on the page like if you look at any landing page ton of videos like if you're bored for one second they're gonna pull you right into another video but at least it's not bite-sized content at least there isn't an algorithm as as toxic as instagram like it's not going to take you through a 500 series of depressing videos if you liked one depressing quote right there's been a lot of lawsuits about kids killing themselves and parents are still fighting meta still fighting um facebook oh that's the same thing but uh they don't want to take responsibility and that's also an area i've been studying a lot it's like wow when you really understand their intentions you start to question why am i on this app as much as i as i am because it's not that you're stupid right like you're not stupid we all think we have control over our attention however if i told you that the same attention engineers that are used in Las Vegas casinos are being, are engineering these apps and the same, like the multi-million dollar, billion dollar psychologist are engineering these apps to keep your attention.

46:27How would you approach your phone? Yeah, you wouldn't go on it. Or you would try to learn how to use it as a tool, right? Like I'm not trying to scare people like the news does and say like, don't, don't, don't, don't. But be more conscious. Yeah, be more selective of who you follow. Yeah, definitely. If you notice your feed is getting a little bit messed up, then at least now you can reset it. Yeah. Apparently, which is good. But it's still, I find it. What do you mean by reset it? You can completely reset your feed and your algorithm. How do you do that? You go on to, I have not personally done it because my feed is actually okay.

47:04Well, I enjoy it. I think you should always see your feed. Don't look at my feed. There's a way of doing it on the settings where you can just reset everything and then it goes back. back to like as if you have just gone to the app for the very first time but then very quickly obviously it will start to adjust based on what you're interested in what you're spending time on the weirdest thing is as well like like my friends are sending some weird stuff sometimes also pretty fucked up stuff i'm also like guilty sending them some fucked up stuff but like if if the the the program the algorithm is noticing that you're spending time or engaging with that type of content yeah to show you more of it i'm willing to even say that if you have a top three send list on instagram your feeds are all gonna look very similar if you have a top three like you guys are when you go to send these are the top three people you communicate with on instagram and you're sending reels to i can bet nine out of ten you guys have a very similar feed because they've categorized you into that audience yeah right and that's what the manipulative engine does, right?

48:06All of this data that we give, Google, all these shopping stores, everything, who's buying that data? Brands that advertise. So it's tough. It gets really complicated when you want to say who's the bad guy and who's not. But I think the main message here is your data is being sold. You're being thrown into an audience. And especially for women, this is problematic because if you feel a certain way at a certain time, you can get stuck in that feeling because your algorithm can be so fixated on that type of yeah and it's horrible like if oh my god it's not even getting to like vanity and you know surgeries and bodies like you could get sucked into that algorithm so use social media as a tool it's so funny i remember i went through a breakup but then i started for whatever reason paying more attention to these reels that were talking about relationships and a lot of it wasn't very constructive reels it was actually promoting like more of a toxic approach to uh relationships as a whole and then i remember after that period of time like my feed was just full of all that kind of stuff but luckily like i'm older and i know what to maybe take interest and make note of or what to just discard yeah the problem is young people have they don't have that filter so that whatever is being sent to them they're kind of absorbing it and they're just approaching relationships with this extremely toxic way of doing it absolutely and i think what's important is to mention is that we're always going to like we have a bias right we have the implicit bias and the explicit bias bias like your implicit is like they're unconscious biases that you have like you don't even know that you have them the the explicit bias is like you know you have that bias like for example um there's a race.

49:52I don't like them. It's an explicitly clear thing I know about. The implicit biases are more discreet. They're more subtle. You don't really know about them. And so I think sometimes when we have an issue, like we got out of a breakup, sometimes we try to justify or we have this bias implicitly where we're looking for that information to justify that I'm in a good place or I made the right decision. And we need to be careful because then we're not in ownership. If there's two positions in life right if you're ever stuck in a moment you should always think about am i in a victim position or am i in ownership right and those two change the course of your life because one operates from responsibility the other one operates from you have no power i'm a victim and so if you're in a position where you're thinking about like you came out of a breakup you can justify if you're right or wrong but then what your ego one okay kudos now you're gonna have the next relationship and what did you really learn and take into that relationship so in those moments we have to have the awareness again to stop and think about what am i what am i looking for right like how often do we stop ourselves and even want to know where we are in the universe of emotions like what am i even feeling we just automatically and that's the issue with these phones like we don't use them as tools we just grab in let me i just want to feel something i want to feel like i'm okay yeah and we're not getting specific about what are you even feeling are you sad do you feel guilt like are you looking for clarity like what emotion there's thousands of emotions we think so there's 30 there's thousands like i think there's 30 000 plus we don't even dwell or just bask in a particular emotion that we might be experiencing for example you might just you might might not sit there and think why do i feel like this there's usually a reason why you feel a certain way but you never really feel it or question where it's come from just like oh okay so anyway let me get back to my phone yeah yeah it's So there's a part of, so an emotion is like emotion, like it's an energy in motion, right?

51:53And a feeling is what you think in your head is the awareness of that emotion, right? So if you're not feeling that emotion, then you can't even recognize it. That's why they say feel, process your emotions. And so what you notice is like in life, you'll have the people who go into the gym so that they don't have to ever figure out or face those uncomfortable questions. and not even just about themselves or about life like what is the meaning of my life so we either go into a route where we're working out so much that there's so much pain in the body we never have to pay attention to these questions like forming our self-concept we never do it you feel like you're doing that were you doing that um no i think like to some degree i've done it i don't think it was so much with the gym because we all have we all create identities and personas I've never carried that mask with me like I was okay with dropping everything as I as I evolved like I was the power lifter dropped it I was the girl who went on Steve Austin's broken school dropped it like I evolved out of so many stages of myself I don't think that I kept a persona long enough because I needed to or because um I wasn't trying like I was trying to figure out what life was about like I was traveling uh I started traveling at 17 I was very much more of a student of life then than I think I was in my mid-20s.

53:15And so I did, however, now next option is we distract ourselves now with either social media. So I never have to pay attention to my discomfort. I never have to get back to the question that makes me uncomfortable. What is my purpose here? What is the meaning of life? Like these are simple questions. Most people cannot answer them. Or I work myself to death, which I think I did. Right. And I wasn't even intending to distract myself from these questions. But I was just working so much that I think I never answered the questions that went back to my childhood, where I'm like, oh, my childhood didn't bother me.

53:47Watching my mom work three jobs and kill herself didn't bother me. It inspired me because I chose to look at it that way, but there were still questions I needed to answer. I should have gone back and evaluated and asked myself more questions about my childhood and how I felt. But I was like, it didn't matter. It made me better. And that's the way I chose to move. And now as you get into your later 20s, early 30s, you're just like, I was distracting myself there. Or I was pushing away the hard questions. And that's someone at my age at that time, I was way above my ears. So what happens to all of us, right?

54:23You're not wrong for doing that. I'm not any better than you. I think the main message here is you have to stop and face those questions. And the sooner you do, I think you'll feel a lot more empowered than less. The sooner you do the less time you put into wasting on um you know short-term gratification or satisfaction or entertainment like the sooner we do that the sooner our society stops amusing themselves to death because that's what we're doing like i love that book amusing yourself to that we are doing that 24 7 short-sized content like the one that the part that like drives me insane is like when do we as a society start to realize that we're so transactional like when do when are we going to like actually wake up to we're lonely but why like we're in a lonely pandemic not just because of like covid made things a lot uh worse but the smart people realized what was happening in the smart people who weren't just let me drink my life away and let me watch these videos and like those people who were polarizing like the idea of what was happening like hmm i wonder why this is happening.

55:29And I'll tell you what I was thinking. They're going to cripple us and make us so weak through isolation. Because when you want to make someone weak, you throw them in jail. You put them in isolation. So what is that going to do to our society? Well, it's threatening our psychological need for sense of belonging and social connection. This is a psychological need. I need my community. My community needs me. So they're eliminating that. All right. So now we're going to be like junkies looking for how am I going to get my social needs satisfied. Now they've made us addicted to social media and our telephones.

56:02Now our focus has declined a lot. Now people are alcoholics. So if you look at the brain circuit, we all have a dopamine circuit, right? Everyone looks a little bit different, but we have the psychological needs. And in the way in which we are satisfying that when it's eliminated, the brain is still going to search for it. Like I used to get a lot of dopamine from hanging out with my friends it's still gonna search for that and so i think that's what i was observing and i was just like wow this is gonna be bad and bad fast because we're not just looking at a momentarily um depressed state we're looking at way more problems down the line on a psychological level um loneliness inability to focus we can't do long hours work like we can't sit down and do long hours of work everybody's got adhd now self-diagnosing themselves i don't really think it's adhd i think you've just been in this uh loop of short-sized content that when it comes down to sitting down and doing the hard work you simply can't because your brain hasn't been programmed yeah i've i've experienced that myself yeah so have i like how the hell can i like not watch a film all the way through well why the hell can i not just sit down and write something it's like i'm always looking to bounce from one thing to the next to the next Yeah, so I mean, I'm taking this back to then, but I don't believe our, people are going to be like, you should be proud to be an American.

57:23But I don't think our country, if you compare it to other countries, is really community focused. Which countries do you find the most? Community focused? South Asia. Easy, easy. I mean, I've been to Thailand and even Japan. I'm going to tell you a story about Japan. You know, no country is perfect. but I look at how the country cares for its community and how the people within the country care for its community. And a lot of these people have less and are happier. And the answer is community. The answer is like they don't feel isolated. They don't feel lonely. There's a purpose into their life more than just themselves, right?

57:57And I think a lot of people in America don't feel that, right? We've become lonely for multiple reasons. We could talk about it if you'd like to dive into that. But we've become a very transactional society. Capitalism will do that. It'll commercialize. any society think dubai is experiencing a portion of that by the city but where did you go in japan i didn't go to japan i'm going to tell you a story about japan okay i thought like from my experience when i went to japan the the men are struggling there like they have no confidence to go and talk to women like that's a very i've found maybe not throughout the entire country but certainly in tokyo it's uh everybody's very kind of isolated maybe in terms of like interpersonal skills.

58:38I think in terms of community, the way I look at it is how we care for one another. And if you look at Japan, for example, like our obesity here in the States is like 42%, if not greater. There's this 4%. And if you say why, and I was listening to a man who actually went and did the study and he went to Japan and shadowed the schools and he went particularly to, was it? I know, I know they, I forget which city it was. They don't, consume excessive amounts of food they eat until they're 78 % full and stop. I didn't see any obese. Yeah, there's no obese people, which was part of his conclusion in his study, purpose of his research trip.

59:20The main takeaways were the public schools there were preventative. They weren't waiting until there was an issue to then come out with a cure. They're preventative, meaning every single public school had an assigned nutritionist. Does anywhere in the US do that? assigned nutritionist who, by the way, cooks the food for the students. The school lunch is cooked by a nutritionist who, by the way, is not allowed to use any paste canned products. Everything has to be made from whole foods. And then on top of that, Cherry on Top, she has to educate the kids about the food, what their body needs. And so if you're putting this into young children, I mean really young, like for the study I was watching, they looked really young.

1:00:01those are the developmental years of children like you're preventing the sugar addictions you're preventing um a lot of the issues that we see here and these are easy fixes for us in the u.s like the more i study science uh political science the more i study history i start to realize that everything is done by design yeah like even our health care system that is so um absurd like there's hundreds and thousands of people dying a year for curable and very easily cured diseases or because they don't have health insurance. And why can't we just apply what Canada is doing? Every single person gets taxed.

1:00:37They're all enrolled into the same healthcare. You guys taxed us 60 % in the US. Why can't you take a portion of that and enroll us all into a healthcare system? So when you start to study, and this is why important to know multiple subjects, it's important to get off your phone and stop being entertained all the time and educate yourself and form an opinion and have a view that's yours not painted by others you start to realize um i think our issue is is more of a community thing like we're very transactional do you think it's uh the the healthcare stuff and obesity do you think that's a lack of education and understanding of nutrition or just the sheer I did.

1:01:15inaccessibility of healthier alternatives. because I've experienced just being in America for a short period of time, maybe not so much New York, but I remember when I was in Texas, I was like, well, I just want to find like a quick, easy place to go and eat. And there was, it was just like junk everywhere, like all these fast food chains. So I found that it was a little bit more challenging to eat healthier. Yeah. I mean, I would like to say it's a mix of both. Like I don't look at things as just like one problem, one solution. I would probably say it's a mix of both. But for me, the way I look at it is like we have access to our phones that teach us so many like easy recipes and so many ways to save money.

1:01:57Like if you go into a store, you're putting six dollars into a box of cereal where like six dollars at the time could have gotten you like two cartons of eggs. Now it's on a completely different trajectory. But I think that the option to eat well is there. I think our health care is set up the way that it is because they want to continue to profit from us. because a client cured is a customer lost, you know? So I think that, and it's crazy because this scientist was telling us that the drug companies like Big Pharma and everything, they would go to them and ask them to make them medications just for treatment, not for cure.

1:02:36The scientist was saying, I was dumbfounded. I couldn't believe that like 70 % of all advertising on tv here is pharmaceutical companies big pharma is a genius like that's the most genius insane it's like why are you still allowing this to happen yeah i mean like people pay like companies or whatever if you have something that's unhealthy you'll go to big pharma and say hey can i pay you for a study and say that this is healthy like big pharma is genius marketing like genius because now anyone can buy research yeah and and so no wonder we're so scared to eat anything but i think at the same time is like, don't fall prey.

1:03:15Like I got off social media partially too, because I felt like there was an influx of information, irrelevant information. Like I was constantly, you can't do this. You can't do that. You can't do that. I'm like, dude, I'm so tired of my phone telling you what to do. This was relating to nutrition. Nutrition, health, like everything, you know, they want to inflict fear in us, right? There's a level of education, but there's a whole lot of fear that they want to inflict. That's what also COVID did. Let's scare these people so much that they're too paralyzed to make a decision. So when you're weak and when you're afraid, your cortex, your system's not operating at its best.

1:03:50And so that's where I was like, you know, let me just cut back a little bit. Let me get back to me. Let me pour back into me. But the issue of do we have access to good food? I mean, you can always make things better. Like there are people who say, oh, well, healthy food is too expensive what does your food belt look like why are you buying so much cereal so much snacks so much um packaged and processed sliced turkey like it's not really excusable it's not there's definitely economic issues that are playing a role into it but it's not the ultimate reason as to why we're obese you know if our community needs to care about one another what are you doing to to kind of improve your environment and the people you're spending your time with?

1:04:34So this is the first time in my life that I feel like I have a social life and it's super grounding. You know, similar to work, what you put in is what you get out. And I've been so fortunate enough to have friends that were so supportive to me, even when I wasn't as supportive or present to them, as I should have rephrased that, I wasn't so present in their lives. Right. And I always tell me my best friend i'm like you've been a way better best friend to me than i have been to you because i always had work work work work work and my true friends supported that or like they were like damn like we'll deal with it for now but they were always there and it's like a guy when he gets in a relationship and then he just disappears off the map and you're like where have you been he's like oh we broke up i'm single now hey let's do this yeah yeah so i i feel Like there's a bit of emotional maturity, a bit of a spiritual maturity.

1:05:27So I think now I've been focused a lot more on my community, on my circle, because that's how I'm going to feel myself. Like Haba has changed. I'm not the same Haba I was before and I don't want to be. Right. The point of life is to enlighten yourself. It's to take that wisdom to do something with it. Right. I'm a lot more scared sticking to the same version of me for the next 40 years than I am be exploring different aspects and perspectives of myself. Even if that means less money, even if that means the initial game plan I had set for myself, I'm going to go off course. That's just who I am.

1:06:02And I think it's important for the world to realize that you play a very big role in our society, being the way that you are in your nine to five job with your unique traits. the issue with everyone conforming to the the trends and this lifestyle that you need to have or you're not successful is we ruin the mutations of the next generation so which we're basically saying entrepreneurs are amazing everyone else is crap right like you should be an entrepreneur have this this this go again go do that but there is a role in every single personality right so if we're going back to evolutionary speaking if there's one woman and a hundred men that's a problem for the next generation because she can only get pregnant once but then if there's a hundred women and one man you can have a hundred babies in one year he's gonna be busy but you're gonna have a hundred babies in a year so the next generation works and we should look at our society as each person is now creating a better gene pool when we mutate rather than everyone being the same because then if we have an issue within a community or even within a board, if everybody is the same or thinks the same or has been conformed to be the same person, we get this group polarization, which is a problem because we have fewer solutions.

1:07:16We all start to think very much alike and then we're afraid to even stand out and say, no, I think this, then that's a problem for society. Do your friendship group like you? No. A mix. I've never had a friend that was like me. Never. So how do you go and find people who are going to be good for your soul? Because I think this is something which has been an issue with any past relationship that I've had in Dubai. I've wanted to kind of get them in the right friendship group, not this toxic community of women who all they're interested in is going out partying and just looking for men with money.

1:08:01uh so the question was how do you find good friends who are good for your soul and i think more so i don't know i feel like it's hard for women to do that am i wrong i don't know but i feel like from my experience in dubai like if i wanted to find friends who were similar to me they were ambitious go-getters willing to help uh each other be supportive of each other i feel like it's a lot easier to find whereas for a woman in that environment i think it's more challenging like an entrepreneurial it doesn't need to be an entrepreneurial woman but just a woman who's just wants to be around wholesome women who's going to be good for the brain well like you said environment is a big factor so it depends on the environment in which you're in so yeah that's part of the reason why i left you by because i don't like being surrounded by people who have values that differentiate from mine.

1:08:56That's an explicit bias. Like, I know that. I know that I want to be around people who are successful and they don't need to bloat about it. Like, I can't stand that. And so I think we can take the first step by knowing our environment and using observation. Like, you are allowed to judge. You are allowed to observe someone and take them for their actions, right? Like, so often people, you know, they don't want to leave their friend circle or they don't, they'd rather not be alone. So they'll hang out with people who have horrible habits, who will like drink their minds away on the weekends because at least they're a part of something.

1:09:32And I think the first step is to be okay with being alone because it's a lot lonelier to be in a group that you don't really share any values with. So number one, know your values. Everyone's so quick to say, I'm a nice person. I'm honest. I'm how, no, really know your values and you'll know your values based on your actions, not based on, everyone could say, these are my values, but how are you showing up in the world? Right? You should know your values first. You should tweak the values that you want to work on because you will attract what you are. You cannot lie to yourself. You cannot. Your subconscious is like literally recording everything.

1:10:11And it's like Google. You know when Google hears you and they just hit that ad? Our subconscious is the seed of our emotions and it projects the manifestation in our life. So if you're looking for better, become the better, identify the values. And then now when you observe, look for people who have those values, even if you don't have them, right? Like growing up, my friends are a lot of times older than me. People think it's a surprise. Like, oh my God, you're so successful. Oh, is it because you're beautiful? Or is it because you worked hard hours? Or maybe it's because I actually didn't do what everyone was doing.

1:10:42Maybe because when I was in high school, I didn't have, I wasn't a cool kid. Or when I was in college, I spent no time on campus. Or maybe because I didn't really spend time with family, I was out in the world exploring and figuring myself out. I was building my experience. Maybe that's why. Like, take out the hard hours, but I was willing to do that. And so going against the grain is very important. Becoming the person you want to be, but also surrounding yourself with those who have those traits. And that takes a little bit of humility. Like, a lot of people want to be the best in the room. You have to accept that there's better people than you and you want to be around them.

1:11:16all my friends are older than me all my friends made way more money than me like i was always 10 years ahead like of anything like anyone around me even my friends of my siblings who were like in their 30s always ahead of everyone and i think that's why why that's the answer so if you want to be ahead that's the answer but you you have to make the hard choice ultimately to like do bygones I was just talking about to my friend about how you it's okay to grieve yourself Right, like so often we grieve the people we physically lose in life But when you're going through a transition and you've changed, right?

1:11:54Whether it's you become a new version of you or if you just rediscovered who you were But you've kind of taken out the noise and you've backed who you were when you're there It's okay to grieve who you were and nobody talks about that. Maybe it's more relative to women but like it's really when you start to look at when you've changed so much that you look at that girl as like damn you're so different and some people don't want to let go of that version of them like they they feel like they owe a loyal loyalty or some type of bound to that version of them it's okay to completely leave that person behind and i think when i did that because it was a very hard thing for me to do i didn't even know that was an issue i had right but when i was going back to the first question you asked me 2022 I came back 2023 something wasn't sitting right all right and then 2024 obviously we saw the thing that happened in Gaza and there's a huge perspective shift for everyone like this huge sorrow this huge moment of like introspecting on your life and right before then I had already like let go of half my team because I was in the position where I didn't lead in the way that I wanted to and I needed to like work on my qualities myself so that I can have a clearer direction and where I want it to go because there comes a point where you're like am I creating or am I responding like I mean like creating and reacting or am I simply like no am I creating and responding or am I reacting and we react inevitably like our primitive mind is what makes us react so I was like I need to pause because I could do so much better than this right like I do good but I could do exceptional and I could also do that in a clearer head so i was already going through that change and when i actually like decided that say i'm going to step off like there is this feeling of it's restorative do you know what i mean like it's restorative you uh actually get to know what it feels like to be present like you've been plugged in for so long do you ever feel like sometimes your thinking could be a lot more efficient if you just had more yeah i think particularly with social media and starting pretty early on you can get caught up in the trap of just doing the same thing over and over again and i think that's what a lot of people do and it's one of the reasons why they kind of they have like a a rise a peak and then they drop off because they either keep trying to be this person which they're no longer anymore because they've matured or they've evolved grown up but then because they're stuck with this identity of being this person creating a specific type of content for this audience which they've built they kind of they lose the passion the enthusiasm and it can kind of come across on on camera on the videos and they just kind of either they just stop posting or people lose the interest because the passion is not there the consistency is not there so i think it's important every so often i don't know how often it needs to be but just you do need to take a bit of time off have a little bit of a break and just review the what you're doing the content you're making does it sit right with you or do you feel like you need to go off in a different direction and i think that's been one of the hardest parts for me is to kind of take that different direction when people aren't used to it or they're not expecting it they're like hang on this is not something that you do and you can have a bit of an identity crisis and have imposter syndrome thinking, oh shit, this actually isn't really what I do or what I'm known for.

1:15:20But this is the new direction I want to take. And it's going to be a bit rocky to begin with. But it's what is needed because this is the next chapter for me. Absolutely. And it takes a lot of courage. And I think something that could help you through that process is remembering that if you are always authentic, there's always an audience because you don't have to pretend. You can only pretend for so long Do you know what I'm saying? Like the personas, the social masks we put on, but behind that is the shadow of like who you really are. And I think people get tired, like your quote is saying, tired, and they lose that spark because then the pretending comes to an end.

1:15:58And sometimes it's so subconscious. Like with me, for example, I was a very intense athlete and I knew that what people loved seeing from me was my motivational videos working out because it didn't register to their head that I need to go work out, but it was a lot more psychological. I always coupled my workouts with potential mindset. And I knew that my extremes would always take their mind there without me having to bore them in education. That's why I did a lot of that training is because I wanted to move people. I wanted them to think differently. And so I kind of enslaved myself to that algorithm of because I know my audience wants this, I'm going to do that.

1:16:37And it came to a point where I was like, yo, I'm so tired of the cameras. Like I don't really care to film my intense training because I wasn't doing that intense training to prove something to myself. I was doing it because I knew my audience loved it. Would you still train like that off camera? Absolutely. Like that was my life. Like if anything, my life in high school, my training off of the grid of Instagram was a lot more intense than what people see. They see the cool stuff, but like the intensity was way, it's always offline. So when the cameras are there, there's always that element of distraction.

1:17:10it's weird because it's annoying for me i i could i could be creating so much more content relating to the gym but nothing makes me happier to be alone yeah in my own little world yeah just training the way i like to train at my own pace absolutely not having to i mean you can you can still kind of do that with the camera being there but it's not it's just not the same that you can't switch off it's it's not especially if you if you are required to talk like i do not like when i'm training i don't like to talk mostly because i don't have the energy to be talking because i'm recovering from the set i've just done then it's time to do it again and you're also tapping into your your psyche so when you were doing something that's like an autopilot like it's easy for us to do like you don't think about picking up biceps i'm picking up biceps you don't think about picking up the dumbbells to do bicep curls you're just doing it your brain then like that's your space to go into creative flow.

1:18:06That's your space to reflect with yourself. That's your time to think because you're in that state. It's very similar to driving. I love my drives. A lot of people like to talk and FaceTime their friends. I love my drives because I'm in my head. Silence or music? Well, I stopped listening to music. I stopped. I've gone into a state, yeah. Well, I listen to instrumentals, right? But I don't... You used to like house music? I liked house music a lot. Yes, I liked hip hop, Post Malone. I never really listened to, like maybe there's one or two trendy songs from Cardi B, but I'm very conscious and conscientious.

1:18:46When you know that your subconscious mind is literally the seeds of emotion, and people wonder why they end up having the demeanor and acts of things that they weren't. It's like, what are you consuming? These songs are so vulgar. If you're listening to really aggressive rap music, then of course you're gonna walk around with an attitude like pretty pissed off i think it's funny because like it's so true like i've used music to my advantage many times and so many nfl players do right like they what are they listening to before they go um out there to compete music's very powerful again use things as a tool for yourself for me in the stage that i'm in i don't need the lyrics of somebody i'll listen to michael buble like i'll listen to music music but i'm not going to listen to profanity i'm not going to listen to drugs and all this stuff that i don't listen to that stuff because it affects me so um at the time and stage when i was competing and i was running absolutely i would have on like the craziest like music but at the same time i wasn't really paying attention i just like liked the roughness of that rap or that hip-hop but i'm very conscious now like as i'm getting older i'm just smarter and i'm wiser so i'm making better decisions so instead of the hour and a half that i spent commuting a day is just on wasteless music the hour and a half is put on podcast.

1:20:03It's put on learning a language. It's put on studying the Quran, which is my religion. God's word is not the most powerful thing on earth. But I think the world has made us so distracted that we don't pay attention to the things that are so important to us. None of the answers of which that you need are ever in the world. Ever. Ever. Yet. So many of us have been, you know, will say, well, maybe if I have the dream body, well, maybe if I have that house, maybe if I have the car and I live in this place in this society can i be happy and it's like you're never gonna find anything looking into the external world you'll experience moments of happiness and which will die very quickly but everything that we've ever wanted is inward yeah right like the book mastery by robert green if you haven't read it i really suggest love how he says like you uh your mastery is always going to start inward like it's never going to start external like there's the external resources that can help us but you have to internally decide that hey i'm happy or i'm grateful like these are the inner works i really want people to like get off of social media as much so you can focus on like podcasts are great um but be more conscious with your decisions and i think for me it's been really helpful like spending my one and a half hours off of music and listening i can't wait like you know like when i'm talking to my friends i can't wait to share something new with them rather than gossip and oh my god did you see what uh the kardashian like this is nonsense like we idolize and worship the most like the biggest failures of earth like and especially i think younger women which really is upsetting because if beauty was really the answer to happiness for women then why is it that the women i don't even spell names because it's quite obvious who have put millions of dollars into their surgeries why do they still photoshop answer that question for me if beauty was the answer to confidence and happiness why photoshop if surgery was the answer if the surgery was really going to make you happy girl why would you still photoshop yeah it shows you that there's a deeper issue it's it's an ego that's never fed it's a hyper sensitivity of over analyzing that's never satisfied because again you're looking at the external to justify something they should be doing from the inside yeah especially if they've if they've grown up with that or like a large part of their career is relying upon their beauty yeah but then even then right people will say if i'm beautiful i'll have i'll have a husband like i'll have a good husband and it's like uh who's had the most divorces ever i think hollywood's been more divorced than the entire country put together i mean that's far stretch but you get what i'm saying like it's not enough the beauty is not enough the money is not enough i think it's really important for each person to be a very independent thinker form your own thoughts don't let the world do it for you because it is without your permission like when you do you know when most of your subconscious programming is uh completed by what age probably young really young like seven yeah seven so while you know we walk around this guy is 45 he might still be a nine-year-old and that's not even kidding like a lot of people are stuck in their subconscious programming meaning their beliefs meaning their viewpoints of life.

1:23:20They're the rules, right? Like it's crazy because you grow up, like when you're born, you don't even have physical awareness. You're just a worm. You have nothing. And then when you're one, you start to notice physical awareness. And then by the time of three, three, four, you've picked up a lot of words. Now, by the time you're seven, you take, you become more concrete. So you take those words and you associate meaning. This is when rules enters your life, right? When your parents say, this is not good, this is not good. So without even choice, you're being programmed like everyone thinking oh no i don't get influenced no we're all getting influenced like you're either programming yourself or you're getting programmed by design so you choose your option because it's happening either way and so most of the programming happens at that age and that's why a lot of times when people go for psychology uh they're always going back into their past figuring out their beliefs figuring out their thought patterns i can't even tell you how many of my friends like i'll be like yo do you know what the difference is between Christians and Catholics, because I'm genuinely interested.

1:24:18I've never talked about religion ever on my social media platforms, because I always thought it was a topic you don't touch, or I don't like dividing people. But again, if you study something, you start to realize division has never really separated us. It actually connects all of us. The media and the way they put out religion separates us. So again, educate yourself, because knowledge is definitely power. And then I wouldn't be having this conversation right now if I didn't study much of what I did. so i'll talk to my friends do you know what the difference is between christians and catholics because i genuinely want to know i'm studying oh no i don't know i'm like okay but are you christian she's like yeah i think so and i'm like okay so you follow the trinity she goes what's the trinity and i was like there's no way this is happening right now like there's no way i'm like son of god you know uh god sends god and in god's spirit i believe i'm like she's like oh really i thought it was just one god and i'm just like oh my god i'm like this is what i mean though like i'm not even saying this in a jokingly way but you know we get programmed that we become concrete at such young age we never question those beliefs ever and then before you know it like we're 30 years old and we still have the programming that we had when we were 10 years old and so who's going to go back and do that you have to i mean there's like i think marriage is a big part like your partner can come and help you like i think anything relationships are so good because they release all of the traumas you've had that you didn't even know you had and if you are willing to learn if you're patient your partner can be one of the best healers for you you got to do the healing but they're going to release all the traumas that you didn't know you had so i think in the society where we're living in where we're making relationships look so pretty like there's absolutely no perfect person but when you look at your person if you see your best friend if you see that person that's like has the qualities the non-negotiable values if those are there all the other annoyances all the other issues you guys have like you should 100 fight for it because every relationship will have it yeah you can't expect to go into a relationship and search for perfection and expect there to be no trauma at all yeah like there is going to be some element of it from something that's happened yeah obviously in some cases it'll be worse than others but i think i have sometimes made the mistake of noticing it and be like oh some trauma here like i don't want to deal with this like she should be working on it i don't want to have to like help her work on it but i think that is your duty as a partner to help each other yeah like i've got my issues which i need to you know solve and if i've got if i'm going to be with someone that's going to help me go through that then i want to tell you something right like we all have issues and there's issues we don't even know we have and that's the shadow of who we are like the subconscious that we buried so low and that you know at some point in our life we had that moment where we said yeah i've been through that but i justified that like it's not affecting me today yeah that's the conscious decision i'm making to say it's not affecting me subconscious says something else that's on a completely different program and it's i didn't know how many like triggers i had until like i met my partner and i'm like oh my god like there's moments where i I was misreading the room or I would say like something's not right and easily you would want to run away from the relationship because remember the primitive mind is there to protect it's not always rational these are animal instincts right it's not always rational so if you just react which it does because the primitive mind just reacts then you're going to miss the opportunity to respond and to evaluate the situation the right way like you don't have to run away all the time you could sit there you could sit in the discomfort you can like analyze what's happening and I think doing that has made me grow and heal so much like my viewpoints my perspectives like I have evolved into I would say into a completely different version of myself but I wouldn't even say it's new I would just say I it wasn't about becoming someone else it's just unbecoming everything that I've acquired throughout my life and we all have the opportunity to do that and if someone else can be your mirror and the soundboard that's totally fine and reasonable and don't let the world tell you that you can't heal that person that's on them like again what where's the empathy like since when do we say i'm gonna marry this partner this person it's gonna be my partner for life your trauma is on your own bye and uh i'm gonna be on my way does that sound right no no right i think there's a level of responsibility that the person has to have for themselves but you as your partner should be willing to help them because they can do that for you in return And then that builds trust.

1:28:55That builds understanding. If you are a man and I'm a woman, your nature is so much more different than mine. Is it not important for me to understand your nature? Is it not important for me when you tell me to dress a certain way for me to understand why you're saying that? Because if you don't explain your nature, I'm going to say you're controlling. It's a patriotical concept and you want to control me as a woman. But if he, as a man explains to me, this is how men are and this is how they look and I'm territorial and I'm protective, why the hell would you not want your partner to be territorial or protective?

1:29:25Yeah. You know, if you really want that deep love, right, again, it has to be reciprocated in both ways. So that's the purpose of having a partner. Like, you're going to help each other. You can't say you're on your own with this trauma because you need them just as much as they need you. And we each have differences. We're not competing. Right? we need to complete each other and that's the ultimate goal of marriage it's like or a successful relationship i have to always make you better so you can always make me better and i always have to be better so i can make you better do you know what i'm saying it all loops in together the moment we start to get selfish and say oh i'm gonna get better and i'm gonna get my bread and you focus on yourself i don't know it sounds like a competition it sounds like a divide it's so interesting it's why i i still at my age i'm still looking to learn as much as possible about relationships and marriage and everything because it's something that you never really taught it's like almost like you have to figure it out for yourself or go in search of that knowledge to help to improve you know the relationships or how to be a better partner or even parent i think one thing which i want to do i want to be a parent but i want to be the best parent that can be and going back to what you said about um everything being absorbed to some subconscious before the age of seven kind of highlights the importance of both the mother and the father needing to be there to be the best parents that they can be i see a lot of uh guys in the red pill space who just think oh well i'm just gonna try and make as many babies as possible and you know i don't need to be around that much like actually i think you probably should be around like do you really want your child to grow up without the father being present much yeah um yeah it's fascinating i think one thing that's important for me now is to be with someone who has a certain degree of emotional maturity who doesn't have to be perfect but just understands that like or have a willingness to work on themselves and to help obviously me out with any issues which i have because i'm certainly i don't think i've been the easiest person to date more so yeah more so just because whenever it came to like expressing feelings or emotions or having to I don't know have uncomfortable conversations I would just be like okay I'm out of here and I was like I just didn't want to deal with it but I you can't have a relationship like that if you want it to work it's really it's really unfortunate because like that's very common for men like men don't talk about emotions it's weak it's not very alpha you just toughen up pick it up and you keep going.

1:32:02And I think for the most part, I can understand that thought process because as a man, you should always show resilience, but that doesn't mean you can't be vulnerable and you can't understand yourself, right? Like, because if you want to be better for the end goal of your family and the next generation, you want to be able to communicate. A big part of communicating is how do you communicate with yourself? How do you understand yourself? Right. And if men aren't taking the time to do that, there's that void and that gap between them and their partner or when the intruder the baby comes in right like i hear this so many times once the baby comes in the woman goes in her own world the man feels like he's been isolated and it's like dude you isolated yourself like because you couldn't like involve yourself in those moments like there needed to be more more depth between you and your partner before you brought that little creature into this world and so a lot of men will look at that baby as an intruder as like now she's busy with the baby and i'm on the sideline you don't have to be on the sideline, actually.

1:32:58You could be just as involved and look at the baby as a project that you both did, not you just handed off the baton. And I think that's what a lot of issues are coming to, is that these men are living off of these subconscious beliefs from their great-grandfathers, even, that this is just a man. You pay the bills, you come home, there's food on the table. And there's, again, I don't want to sound like an activist, an active feminism activist. Oh my God, I'm getting mixed up. I'm not a modern feminist, is all I have to say. I believe in the powers and the works of feminism early on when it actually earned us something, but I think where it's going today is really out of control.

1:33:36But there's this narrative that you inherited and every single generation before you about what it meant to be a dad or a husband. And if you don't really check that in line and make sure it aligns with the partner that you're with, then why do you think there's going to be issues? outdated programming outdated maybe she's evolved so much more that her generational way of viewing parenting is not affecting her like for me there's so many traditions on how a household should be raised i'm like oh i know i'm not going to do this the way my mom did i'm not going to do this the way my dad did like i've taken the time to think about those things so you you as well have to take the time to think about those aspects and then get to a level of depth with your partner where you discuss all these things.

1:34:20So many relationships today start off on, oh, you make me feel good. Oh, you're beautiful. Oh, there's butterflies in the air. You're so happy to explore this new thing. It's exotic, right? I would not have gotten married if I did not have all the hard conversations early on. It did not feel beautiful in the beginning. I think it's very important for people to understand that the right decision doesn't always feel right. Sometimes you got to stick through the thick, and everyone thinks that the thick is coming at the end of the relationship. If you bring it early on and you literally pick each other apart, what are your values?

1:34:58How do you expect this? How do you expect that? If the person's going to run away from that conversation, do you think they were ready for the relationship? You will see discomfort in them, but you're going to help work them through it, and you're going to tell them why you're asking these questions. but that should be the first step and that's not taught to us have the hard conversations in the beginning so you're not wasting yourself you're wasting your time and your life being attached to a human being you're both wasting each other's lifetime of course is there a lesson you can gain from the relationship yes like truly is anything a waste no if you grasp a lesson but you could really save yourself the time and get what you want if you're a lot more intentional and a lot more yeah that's something i never did i never started off a relationship just saying okay so these are things that i like uh these are things that i don't like in a partner this is what i want from the relationship like you know what happens when you're 40 those conversations forcefully come out yeah forcefully i've started to notice it more now it comes out like you're either gonna do it early on again preventative is better than cure take this like formula and apply it to everything in your life.

1:36:02Am I going to wait till I absolutely have to? Or am I going to do it early on and get what I want sooner? Right? Your subconscious is running its own program. You as the captain need to say, this is what I'm doing now. And so you'll find a lot of like older men either because their bank account's been depleted or because, you know, that's it. Like the energy is not there. The reserve is not there. They're actually like wanting to settle down. They're forcefully having to like bring up these topics women are more likely to do it than men men get there later on um just again not generalizing everyone but as a whole men tend to wait because their communication skills aren't that great their emotional ability to have these conversations has not been trained and so i think if you're a guy it's especially if you didn't have sisters yes actually well that's me i was i was growing up in a very masculine household i feel like if i'd learned these things or i don't know being around the right people to discuss it would have helped me out massively because you men aren't really trained for it i don't feel like it's almost like we are being programmed by social media about relationships and how they should work you are and it's all like bite-sized content that's like irrelevant like you have opposing views all the time that you've never even like actually concluded an opinion if you think about it if you're upset one day at your partner and you go on social media and you're like, oh, I was right, I was right.

1:37:28Then you get like these bite-sized information just feeding your ego. And then on another day, you're getting opposing views. So you're soaking in. And either way, you're getting two perspectives. You're right and you're wrong. But what did you actually get out of that? What opinion did you form? It's never ever effective enough for us to understand the topic at hand because it's bite-sized content. People aren't having to grasp a chain of thought long enough. Like we've stopped reading. So if you've stopped reading, You stop being able to think and write properly. Nobody can open up a book right now and actually read 10 pages without putting it down.

1:38:06That is terrifying. That is terrifying. So when you ask yourself, why can't I articulate my thoughts? How good are you at even holding a focus on a chain of thought? Because that's what a book does. You're with the author. You take their chain of thought and you carry it to the end of the book. But when you're on social media and social media is saying, hey, you don't got to focus on anything. just come here have some fun laugh cry about some cats and then be on your way tonight and i was like dude my life is a roller coaster because i go on social media i get this news either fabricated or real um i get entertained i find some useful education videos i save a lot of diy videos like do-it-yourself videos that i will never do um and then i cry over cry over cats I bet your feed is full of cats.

1:38:52I'm on this emotional rollercoaster. And at the end of the day, what did I really accomplish? And so if you're finding yourself there, I think the best thing you can do is find yourself. You can use social media, use it as a tool. But the saddest thing in life is actually not achieving your goals. That's not the saddest part. I used to always say, like, not knowing your potential. The saddest part of life is not actually knowing who you are. living life so cluelessly, so distracted that you don't even realize that your whole life, you were just on autopilot mode. You never even got to get to know yourself.

1:39:25I think that is the saddest part of life. And I've decided when I stepped back, it was a hard journey. I didn't even get to talk to you about, but I want to talk about that because the transition is very hard. I decided that who I am and the relationship I want to have with myself has to always come before any type of success or work because I was redefining success. Like success to me isn't, I run three companies. I don't care about titles. Like I can care less if you introduced me as an entrepreneur or you introduced me as Hibali or you introduced me as an athlete. It really does not matter to me.

1:39:59It doesn't because I know who I am. Like I don't need the world to know this title of me. And so getting, going through that journey, I was just like, you know, it's insane how you have this identity online and you feel like you need to protect it or you feel like this guilt of again having a duty to your community and I was like wait before I can be the leader to the world I have to be the leader to myself and it's very easy to do that if you take a baby picture of yourself right now and you look at that little boy and you have some empathy with that little boy and then you congratulate him for all that he's done and the challenges he's gone through would you not be a better mother father to that child right so instead of constantly looking out into the world saying i need to figure this out did you forget that you're actually really good at being a mentor to yourself but you have to tap into that and so i i would look at my baby pictures and i would actually like cry like i would be really sad i'm like why do i cry every time i look at my baby pictures like most people would be like that's cute and i remember my partner was next to me and I was showing him my baby pictures and I just started crying.

1:41:04And he's like, why are you crying? Like, I'm like, I think I'm crying because like, I never gave her the credit. Like, I think I was either in survival mode for so much of my life. And I think I tried to do so much for other people that I never like paid attention. I was like, yo, you did a good job. Like you've done so much in your life. And once I tapped into that, I became game over. like I was no longer gonna let work come before my well-being and I'm not talking about my well-being like I work out and I eat well and I sleep well I mean making my my conscious decisions on what sits right for my soul and my heart first that means whatever deal I have to lose with money I'm losing it and I think that's kept me very rooted within myself and my belief with God because if you don't have that you are going to follow this godless demonic society is what they're doing yeah and so it made me so much closer to myself so much more rooted because i paid attention to the little child in me and the little child in you is so powerful that you find a partner where that inner child can come back to life that's when you're like i'm so happy i want to marry you because that inner child comes back to life so pay attention because all the answers are within you the healing can happen within you and taking the time offline made me realize how So I've been, even when I got my dream home, like I don't post anything of my life online.

1:42:28I don't need to blow, I don't need to load, nothing. But when I got my dream home, I just moved in by myself and I showered. I started crying. I've never cried like this in my life. And I was like, holy shit. At what point are you going to realize that you're not just living the dream that you've wanted? You're beyond that. And so what are you chasing? Like, how about what are you chasing in this world? And what is the rush? and that's why I was like you know what let me pull back to focus on myself to regroup to not lose touch of reality to get my feet on ground because what is it exactly I'm chasing what are your values now I think my values are very much rooted in being a like number one I have to be a woman that follows God's word and I was always very conscientious of that but I don't think I was uh really putting much like I wasn't a practicing Muslim I was Muslim by default I wasn't practicing so i think now putting in more effort into that by the way you're doing it's ramen right now and you're currently doing this fasted yeah no food no water so i respect that oh thank you because i've gone like just i don't know how long it's been but out of respect i'm not drinking anything during this podcast oh you totally can yeah i know but i don't like can we get him some water this is okay i saw as i walked in here your buddy was telling me about these amazing snacks he was eating and i was like by the way he's like you know these are so good and he was just going into the flavor details and i'm like by the way i'm fasting i can't have any no i like i've done it before in the past where i've even done like training videos with people who are fasting and i'm like i don't want to no it's we we really appreciate that out of respect exactly we really do it's very nice um but a message to the people This is not about just, like, you don't have to be a Muslim to take away from what I'm going to say.

1:44:21Anything is easy when there's faith. Absolutely anything. Like, why do we naturally get this talent to stop drinking water, to stop eating, to stop even carrying out the habits that we've had that don't serve us? Like, we're not just fasting from food and water. What we look at, what we say, and what we hear. So it's fasting of everything. It's actually being who you're supposed to be if you're following your religion. it's a good civilian a good person and so anything that has faith is easy to accomplish so that's why i always say believe in yourself every nfl player or any person we hear about i believed in myself or somebody believed in me and that's why with you said those that have the most faith have the most success yeah yeah and so like if you can't find that faith in yourself then find the faith in god yeah because then you you find an infinite amount of power and you have a purpose to live.

1:45:12A lot of people are lost in the world, absolutely lost. They have no values. So back to my values, integrity has always been one of those things. I literally will vomit at myself if I ever do something that's not right. And I think that's my conscious. My conscientiousness has always been at an all-time high, doing things with integrity, community, love at the core of everything, even as a leader. I don't think I was always the best leader when it comes to being a CEO. own and i think also taking this time i'm becoming better in all ways right like for for the team that i will have to manage being a leader is not an easy thing there needs to be compassion there needs to be empathy there needs to be amazing communication like they need to be your friends before they're your employees and what happens with work is things get serious what you start errors happen loss of money and then it's easy to say whose fault was this like love needs to be at the core of everything at the end of the day that person's not just your employee it's a friend it's somebody's son or it's somebody's dad or somebody's mother and i think when we always have that empathy and love we have a successful community within our workspace within our families within our communities so that's been very big for me and i've been showing up for my friends and family more because of that because it's very important um what else is my values i I mean, I think it's all the things you always hear, you know, but I think it's being honest, loyalty.

1:46:38Yeah. I mean, it's definitely there. I mean, honesty more with myself, right? Like I'm honest with the world, but how honest am I with myself? I've discovered so much about myself in that transition offline because, oh my God, I was telling people to talk positively to themselves, but my self-talk was awful. Awful. And I'm like, you'll be real with yourself. Like, why are you this hard on yourself? like you needed to be when you were a horrible athlete no money in your account you needed something to prove to yourself so at that time the criticism was real right like i really was a nobody like i really did suck at sports so it's great but now heber you don't suck at sports you are successful like what is this negative self-talk coming from so the honesty within myself is where it needs to be exercised i am if anything a little too honest with other people i'm way too blunt like sometimes yeah but that's refreshing though yeah like when somebody even if it's like a woman if they're like brutally honest to me where it's like probably a little bit offensive i'm like whoa i like that but i can't i like it though because it's like okay she's not afraid to tell it how it is yeah and that that is rare these days i think yeah because the thing is we want people that make us feel good but like you got to define everything in your life.

1:47:52A, define success and define love. Don't let the world do that for you. But at the same time, the person that I'm with, if they're not saying some things to make me feel uncomfortable, how much do they love me? I don't want the person who's going to sugarcoat things. Yeah, I want to be babied for sure. I want you to pamper me, make me feel great. But I also want the person that's going to hold me accountable and I need to be held accountable and who's going to point out my flaws and my weaknesses. That is a better version of a parent because that is someone who can communicate to you like love in the way that you need like within physical touch or whatever your love language is um that obviously you can't get from a parent but like you did the test um i did yeah what do you say minus physical touch and uh attributions mine's acts of service x i mean acts of service i meant i said attribution so it's acts that's a great test to do I was actually like, I was borderline pressured to do it because this person had done it and they were like, I need to know what yours is.

1:48:52I think they just wanted to know what, like. Why would you not want to know, Mike? Like, why would you not want to know what that is? I don't know. Because I just thought it was like, bro, I don't need to know this. So anyway, I did it. And I was like, wow, this, it makes so much sense. I'm like, okay. So you can, you can do this test online or you can, you can actually pay a little bit more to get a very in-depth version of it, which I did. and i was like okay this makes this makes so much sense and like if you can just give that to your partner they will understand you so much more and like stop maybe not wasting their time but doing these things which aren't gonna like yeah have an effect that you want you're pouring into a cup but you're not pouring into the cup you need yeah like don't don't shower me with compliments because i don't care about the compliments like do something which is gonna to make my life easier it was going to help me out in a certain way i think that's a huge value of women and like a man's world as being able to like soften soften him in those areas and to be able to help him with those interpersonal skills and interpersonal skills because they've been taught to be tough in the world right and uh they they see things and so they wear that persona the persona is the social mask we wear and that's totally fine but if you get lost in that then that becomes your identity so you should wear that mask when you're out in the business world but when you come home like you should be able to you know have the skills you need to like remove the persona right like okay out there it's cutthroat guys have to be a certain way absolutely go put the persona on but when you come home you're you you're you're the father the husband you're um with her and there's a completely different way and that that test was amazing honestly yeah because even imagine telling someone you don't love me you don't love me but you don't love me you don't show me that you love me yeah and you're like what are you talking about i buy you stuff all the time yeah it's like but i don't want you to buy me stuff i just want you to hug me it's it's so important because even like i would when i was younger approach it as a way of how i would like certain things so if i like to be treated a certain way i would do the same thing to them but it doesn't hit the same because they don't really care about that like what they're they care about is the the touch or the words of affection like that's what's going to resonate with them but because i didn't understand how each person can be different there was always these problems and they always had that doubt they're like but that you've never you're not said you love me or you've not done this but i'm like yeah but i've just gone and done this for you and see what that ends up doing is it makes you feel like you weren't appreciated so then you stop trying yeah and um you know the relationship just starts to diverge because uh you feel like Like your love was not noticed or it was taken advantage of or there wasn't any gratitude or appreciation, which for the record, I think every relationship like love is not enough.

1:51:41And the respect is obviously the utmost important thing for a man, but it definitely is for a woman. Right. And lately I've been just seeing this entire movement. I mean, not to change the topic, but like this entire movement where, you know, there seems to be like a war between men and women. And I totally am just there like so disgusted. And like I told you, I'm a divergent thinker. So I'm willing to look at multiple perspectives. I'm willing to be in the man's shoe, the woman's shoe, the woman's shoe that has the kids who's been through the divorce. I try so hard to understand how we got here.

1:52:12There's way more content which has been pumped out there, which is dividing men and women as opposed to actually bringing them together and offerings. There's no solutions. Godless, demonic people that want to separate us. And I think this is why community is very important. Education is very important. This whole movement of women empowerment. even i was just in saudi arabia talking at that event for um the riad active and it was a woman empowerment like fitness forum and i like got on the stage i'm like to say that we need women empowerment is counterintuitive to like that we are already powerful like is there anything more powerful than conceiving new life is there anything more powerful than that no there isn't so why are we women empowering women rather than just telling them that they have power like you don't need to do anything to prove that power like you conceive human life like to bring life to life is insane anything more powerful than that is probably just like god's word but like as human beings there's nothing more powerful than that so women are being told that they have to be more empowering and to be honest with you who is benefiting from this right like there are definitely issues between men and women but again you have to step out of the drama and say what is happening here if a government can take taxes from two working couples who benefits who benefits when the i mean there's so many tactics like if you open your eyes it's all in front of you they don't want us to get along whether it's on a religious point of view whether it's on a um on a love point of view a friendship point of view like everything pushed out is dividing us because it's easier to conquer a weaker community.

1:53:54It's so much easier. And so I'm like, how can we get to a point where we are understanding each other's nature, right? Because I'll tell you right now, as a woman, the reason why the manipulation is happening and they believe in this patriarchy and they're being used and there's this slave to master relationship with women, I really think that they're doing that because women feel unheard too. Men need respect in a relationship so they can keep providing and they could feel noticed like that's for men they need that like you you should always appreciate him and like verbally tell him um how much you respect him and obviously with your actions but for women i think what happens is like this this pre it's not a pre-assumption what am i looking at when you already expect something um what's the word when you already expect something i guess i could say when you already expect something to be done and you no longer appreciate it than the other person what's the word i'm looking for expectation it's another expectation yeah i guess that's the word expectation it's not the word because you're still looking for it yeah but what i'm trying to get to and hopefully while i'm explaining i could say like women love to cook and clean and take care of their partner and i think that gets shifted when it's expected all right expectation when it's expected rather than appreciated And so when you take a woman in that state who is already vulnerable and then you throw at her all this media that men take advantage and men hate women and men, and they do it on the other way too.

1:55:25Women hate men and women are gold diggers. Like, where's that actually taking us? Can we validate those points? Absolutely. Because there's always going to be somebody in a certain circumstance that you could validate that point, whether the man was the abuser or in the man's situation or the woman was the gold digger and stole his money. We can always find those examples in society. But as a whole, what does that get us attacking each other? Are we understanding each other or are we just throwing rocks at each other? So I think it's really important for us. You might have some valid points or you might be able to understand someone's valid points.

1:56:01But be careful with how you shape your perception because then that's going to affect your relationship. And that's very hard to fix. right and so I grew up always having that type of view because in the Arabic world like you're it's just more conserved and I perceived that like conservatism as like too too protective and I was like oh I can't do that I can't do that and like fast forward 15 years and it's absolutely absolutely what I love right because I've emotionally matured and I've been able to understand other people's perspective. I've been able to heal my own wounds so that I'm not always offended by what somebody has to say.

1:56:41And so you end up complimenting each other when you're able to listen to another person's needs and look at how the bigger picture works. But if you're still that same little girl that's offended and hurt because of whatever experience you went through, again, you're carrying that subconscious experience with you your whole life. And we each, men and women need to like look at us as complimenting because what is so i can't curse on here and i don't curse anyway but this whole boss girl era right why why do we think that we could put our foot on like men's necks who like literally built everything like the car we drive in the roads majority like i mean sure if you want to say there's some female contractors that's great but we've done a lot and women on the other hand have done a lot we've conceived life like we've we've been we've each been the backbone of our of our homes and what i'm noticing is like family structures are being broken because on one end social media is saying that person doesn't appreciate you and on the other hand i'm saying that person's taking advantage of you and it's putting seeds of doubt and it's ruining what we should just recognize as like that person's good at this and i'm good at this and i'm going to help him be better there and he's going to help me better be better there and so that's the logical way and the right way to be looking at the issue that we're we're dealing with but then you have the men who say they want a certain thing but act a different way and my advice is because that's why women are changing right and i'm going to touch on this because it's really important when i talk to women or when i see them or observe them they are changing their ways either dressing more provocatively or going to certain places they usually don't go because, well, they had a breakup and then their ex who said he wanted a housewife was engaging in those types of women or looking at those types of women.

1:58:33And so in this scenario, I would say to the man, you have to be the leader of the house if you want it to be treated like the leader. You can't say you want one thing and then act a certain way because your woman's going to follow that. If you really are the leader and you want it to be treated like it. There's a lot of pressure on you to act right, not just for your partner, but for the kids to come. You're not just the provider, the leader. You can't double-side and I'm a leader here, but I'm also not a leader here. Those are the double standards. And for the woman, I think what's important is even if that man messes up, why would you ever meet him at his standards and lower your standard to now be more provocative, to be more seen?

1:59:15like there's no treasure that begs to be seen right like you have to work hard for that treasure people dig for mining like you have to go to the bottom of water's depth to get pearls like why because one person didn't appreciate you are you changing your ways and lowering your standards because he was just at a low standard like you just got the wrong quality and you misread him like that's your mistake you should probably own up to the fact that you just didn't pick the right partner right but we don't do that we have a lot of ego we have a lot of well he messed up and because he's doing that i'm gonna do this you're shooting yourself in the foot yeah you know what i mean so there's an accountability to both people if if you want to be treated with so much respect and praise and like you want to be the leader act like one and if you as the woman want the right man stop showing yourself off naked yeah like some women aren't though and they end up doing that right but if you are a good woman and you're looking i've seen that i've seen that change actually you've seen that right it's because actually an ex-partner of mine who was uh she always used to always cover it up like always and then i've seen over the years like not the every now and then something might just pop up and i'm like oh what's going on with it and then she's like this is not the same person who i was with like what's happened there like Like she's experienced something and changed her ways, but it doesn't look good.

2:00:41See, the thing is, right, there is a war. Like the social media is a very hostile environment, very hostile, chaos everywhere. And there's always a war for two things, your attention and your values and beliefs. Because if they could take your attention, they can sell you. And if they could sway your beliefs or values, they could sell you something. There's always a war for those two things. so you find people changing a lot when you are a woman with conscientiousness like myself you're not going to show your body online to get more followers you're not going to do it to get brand deals you're definitely not going to go on only fans like way too much conscientiousness and values you can't shift that in me but what you're seeing in society is there's women who are like oh well if i took that shortcut well if i just did that well if i just did that then i can get what i want faster it's like well if the devil lied to you and if the world was able to like switch your values then you're going to pay the long-term consequence of that and maybe you'll just distract yourself so much that you just sold your soul and you don't care right but um like i want all women to know this they can look sexy with their clothes on yeah do you know why they don't believe that because well first of all i think it's the guy's fault thank you because the men are the ones that are they're rewarding the women by double tapping more or engaging more like a pornography yeah how much money is being poured into that how much it's absolutely disgusting so they think women are stupid women are so smart we can be like fbi agents we are so wicked smart and we observe and we're so much better at reading facial expressions there's so many studies i wish we had four hours to talk because there's a lot i want to tell you but women are so smart and the men are always like but how did she know that but how did she this and you're such a detective no god gave us this like intuition and this ability to read they know stuff i made the mistakes of thinking i can get away with certain things but i can't like if i'm with a smart woman i can't get away with shit and that's good it's for your benefit right and so women are very good at these things and so what happens is we learn through uh our observation right so if we don't take people for what they say although in the beginning we might fall for a man because of what he says, not what he does.

2:02:54Then you get your heart broken a couple of times and then you realize I can't fall in love with what a guy says. I have to fall in love with who he is and what he does. And so when we see that, and this is where men, well, women fall is you're looking in the wrong area. If you're looking at the man who's following that list, if you're looking at the man who's interested in those things and he's not walking with his gaze down, which all of our religious texts tells us to do, same for women, then you're just looking in the wrong place. And you can't judge all men for that. First of all, you can't be that type of bait.

2:03:28If you're the bait, you're not even going to find the man that you're looking for because you're doing what you don't like. But if you are the conservative type and you see the man or the men doing that, then you're just not in the right pool. You need to take yourself into a different environment. And it could be really tough in today's age because everyone's on social media but i swear to god they are there like they the options are there we're just not looking there same as job opportunities the world is so quick to tell you you have to be online to be relevant you have to have an online store why are you letting the world tell you like what the success is there's so many again the girl i was talking to in the beauty store who let go of that big job opportunity for fashion week that she used to do the makeup artist she's like you know what's crazy i ended up finding like five more opportunities on ground that have made me significantly happier like maybe i don't get paid exactly the same amount but i'm so happy i have the privacy to my life i don't have to constantly be on i don't have to be on social media and i and that's what i want people to know is like don't think that social media is everything because it's definitely not and there's way more on ground that we're not paying attention to opportunity will always surround us have you noticed that by pulling yourself away everything has still been okay with the businesses like it hasn't been too heavily reliant upon you having a presence online uh because you have the clothing yeah so i was in the coat any fitness coaching relating stuff yeah so i'm gonna be completely honest with you like the the fitness coaching stuff we onboarded a nutritionist and other people to help in that wrong because it would be nearly impossible for me to train thousands of people but also my curriculum is so different than just any personal trainer and so if you enroll with evolve nation the programs aren't just do this workout which most of the time they're they're taking you through a series of training styles that mimic the hybrid training right um you're getting a hundred page psychology curriculum and what i've realized is and i think this is really important for business is ask for the market value you deserve, right?

2:05:36I was doing a monthly service of getting a brand new ebook every single month, new videos, new programs. And I think I definitely overextended it myself. And I - It's a lot of content. And I undercut myself because I wanted to be fair to the market and I wanted to fit in with the market. And it was still like$50 a month. And it was doing so well, but it was so time-inducive. And like I said, I'm a conscientious person. So I like to do my work and I like to do it very just and very thoroughly. So I was writing every ebook. Imagine now as a coach, you know what that means. 70 pages, designing it, filming the content.

2:06:11Every month. Every single month and connecting with the community. And you were like basically their life coach because every Saturday you had a live with them. And I did all of this at the rate of$50 a month. And when I did my Evolve challenge, which was that concept way more extensively, like that was 120 page book that I would, each week we would sit into, um in like kind of like a live setting and i would explain these concepts so what does emotional regulation mean and what is the primitive mind and how are habits formed and how can you change habits that is the r of the consistency which is required like nobody goes into the psychology and mentality that's needed to actually stick to a plan and get the most you want absolutely but then i realized that i had the great idea wrong model right like i simply cannot charge the rate that I'm charging for a course, right?

2:06:58Like how much did I pay in college for that? Obviously people won't pay that, but you have to know like, and I think you should just go based off the hours. You have to know what the cost and the value of that is. But so that's the Evolve Nation. It's always been like a mindset and movement aspect to it. And then the clothing. So again, everything is so much on me because I pour my heart into my work. And if I don't pour my heart into it, I just don't care. Then why am I doing it? So with the clothing, I'm also the designer. I take the actual pattern draft into graphics, into tech packs, well, tech packs into patterns, into graphics, into the actual garment.

2:07:37And then I'm also doing the marketing strategy. So I was doing it all, Mike. Like, I'm not even kidding. I was that, you know, when they say like small businesses don't grow. Control freak. Yeah, it could be a control freak aspect. but I also think that I was the designer. So if anything went wrong with the design or anything, it was always falling back on me and it's an extension of who I am. So if I'm going to speak on excellence, my clothing should be excellence. And so where EVLV is is still insanely amazing. Like I'm really, I love EVLV. It's my baby. It's like the physical product of what I preach.

2:08:15I don't do a gazillion drops because I simply cannot supply that demand. And most people are like, oh my God, but why? You should get an investor. You should hire on designers and do this. Then it lost the entire concept of why I did it. I would love for it to grow where maybe I can get another designer on board to help with some things, but I'm not looking to be the mega corporate brand. I like my niche. I'm happy with my art. I don't want to be commercialized as a brand like the whole world has been everything is commercial that's very rare to have that mindset you know like i'm super happy with what i have and i've been on the side where i launched four collections in the year and i made stupid money like but then i reinvested it back into the brand and then everything that comes comes at a cost right so there was a lot of like logistic stuff like not enough inventory and there's you have to always be involved in that field um even when i hired operational managers and everything like my team was growing so big they're like yeah but you're the ceo i'm like can we hire a ceo this is getting really stressful and this is the glamour that i think a lot of people talk about and you know business is also too vague of a word a word like what do you mean by you want to start a business right people should get really specific I think before you ever, ever decide to go into business, know thyself first.

2:09:41Who are you? What are your values? What are your non-negotiables? What kind of lifestyle do you want to have? How social are you? How important is community to you? Because there are definitely a lot of seasons and quarters of isolation and some people can't handle that. And some people, once they start, they say, no way in hell would I trade off my social life. Like I know my two sisters, big family-oriented people. They couldn't survive one month in the life I lived. And I know that. And that's why I'm saying there's no life that's better than the other. I can't say that my life is better than yours just because I make more money or I've traveled to more countries.

2:10:16Like we're all unique in our own sense. That unique aspect contributes to society. So in my family, there's Heba, the workaholic. There's Ruba, my twin, who is very similar. So we'll just join us together. there's dunya who is the very uh she's the soft one in the family she's the one who's always there to listen to everyone's problem she's always there to like also give that back she shows up for my mom a lot there's bushra who's always organizing the events for the family keeping us together that's good need that there's bishar who's like the mechanic who fixes everyone's cars and there's also amar who's more of like the science edgy um science nerd of everything and we always go to him when we have questions about our body and stuff like that so do you see how like my family has a very interesting gene pool now imagine you had a whole family of of entrepreneurs or a whole family of lawyers see each other no not even not not not only not see each other but now our problem solving options have been refined by a lot now we're all very different so if we say we have this problem each person can bring forward a solution that's going to be different than the other person.

2:11:24If you have six lawyers on the table, you're probably going to have six similar answers. So the main message here is be very authentic. Do not let the world think that because you don't have a Bugatti, a yacht, and you don't have all the stuff that the world is portraying as happiness, even though we are smart and we pay attention, Hollywood is the most depressed state in all of the US. Do not be swayed by this. Even if you have less money, Maybe you don't have the specific features that the world is trending, saying this is beautiful. You are so unique and you will find the right person for you.

2:11:58You will find the right opportunities. But the only way you will get there is if you start inward and you appreciate those unique traits and you build off of what's a natural inclination to you. You don't follow the trends. Right. And that's easy. I feel like, oh, that's easy for you to decide because you have created your businesses online. Well, if it was so easy, I would still be doing it. But I've actually decided to stop and kind of restart and realign and say, there's something that's more authentic that I need to go to rather than following what I've been following, which I feel like has been contaminated.

2:12:29I feel like a lot of my work and the reason why I've been moving forward, not because she's from a place of creation, actually, I think is a place of survival. And I never want to be in that place. I needed to be at one point in my life when I had no money and nothing to my name and I couldn't help my family. but I'm older now and I have a responsibility and a system here that I control like this is our system our brain is so wicked smart it consumes most of our calories you should understand your system if you can understand your system dude you can set anything you want in your life because perspective sets our life right like why can I say now that my perspective being offline is so much more positive than what I did a year ago when I was in the experience because I changed my perspective.

2:13:16Was I able to do that a year ago? No, I couldn't. Like it took time to change my perspective, to change myself. And so I think if the world is keeping us so busy and occupied that we don't have time to pick up a book and read. I swear if people knew their power, if they knew how insane their brains are, you would not be chasing anything but that book, right? Like TV, social media, it steals your attention, but the book, you have to give it your attention. and in return it's a lot more rewarding than all of the nonsense you consume and not to say like this podcast is amazing mike well there's a lot of great there's a lot of great media and i just told you that i spend an hour and a half of my day commuting listening to podcasts that's called using media as a tool yeah you know what i'm saying you're good at this you're good at talking and you have a lot of value to offer so i think i think there's there's a way for you to just efficiently create the content that needs to be created and it not take up too much of your time and you just hire people to disperse it and post it you just did what you just did exactly what a man does right and this is why this is why i love i freaking love the differences between men and women like we really should stop competing with each other letting society or the world or these godless people who are controlling our medias to make us turn against each other because men are so special and so are women like i just have an issue in my head that seems so much bigger than it is it's so time demanding and you're like look it's very simple and you're able as a man i'm not even kidding you're able to pick out one area a woman will think about 10 different branches of areas where you're saying you're really good at this so you should do this and then delegate this to these people um so you took an issue and was able to find a solution within a middle of a second by observing one problem but a woman well it's the time and then i also have to do this and then what if i have to do that and then i also have like four hours dedicated so we end up merging a lot of thoughts into one and so that's interesting i don't think you need to be so heavily involved like you were before like doing all i remember seeing all your stories i'm like holy shit how are you doing so many stories yeah the best thing is just post and ghost yeah like oh that's what i was doing recently yeah so do like create all the content that needs to be done get them chop it up get them post it like to the point where you don't even need to be on your own account it just goes out and it's done yeah you know or somebody just follows you around and just yeah you have someone i don't like that anymore i'm being honest like i never liked that i did that because i wanted to add value to my community and show them inside my life but if you noticed i was never the type to vlog my life i was never the type to i did a get ready with me like two times and then well yeah the vlogging is time consuming it's not just time consuming because i don't want like i'm that's just me and my principles and how i was like i guess raised and how i am and conservative i don't think it's necessary for people to see my bedroom or my bathroom or like there's certain things to do that no like you know what i mean like wake up brushing their teeth and like all this like people want that i'm not even kidding my sister-in-law you know there's like the day the day in the life uh reels that people are making if you knew how much time that actually takes to do it's like holy shit this person has not got enough going on like someone actually dm me and said hey you should make a reel like this guy because he gets loads of engagement i'm like i'm not spending half of my day filming these little clips to show everybody like what my fake day in the life is like what do you think is your most valuable asset mine oh like what is the most your most valuable asset in life time time right so as you get older right hopefully you get really good at evaluating your life looking at where your time is being spent i guess evaluating some rois return on investments um and then you realize like your time can't be bought and you know if you're poor i know you're the first one to say for a million dollars i'll give up 20 years of my life but i swear to you when you reach the financial am i talking too much i think we're doing like two hours oh no way yeah okay so i think um because you don't have it you have your opinions about how large it is but when you are in that journey and you have the opportunity to stop and assess you realize that your time can't be bought and that's a huge factor when it comes to like um you know changing your course changing your course and and what you decide to do and what you're willing to negotiate on and not and for me it's been like it's a non-negotiable like setting up cameras first of all it's cringe first of all it's cringe as hell like i i don't even know how i would look at myself in the mirror that night like if i had to like wake up and turn off the lights and then i think the lights back on and then like reverse to get my phone off the at the very least you should just come into a place like this where everything's set up just chat for two hours and then just walk out yeah and done let everybody do what needs to be done yeah absolutely because you're i just feel like you're too good to not be heard oh thank you you know it's crazy i've been told that since i was like 18 and i think there's something subconsciously that i'm still i don't think like i don't have a fear of speaking i love talking yeah i don't have it i think it's the great thing for me to do but not the right time like there was a lot of things i feel like i had to experience and right now like also as much as i'm ready to go out there and talk like there's all these i've been working on a lot and i can't wait to present it like from evlv to evolve nation like i've been working on a lot like on my own like i don't need to broadcast my progress which i think a lot of people are telling you to do in businesses show the process show the process sometimes things are a little too premature to like share and it can contaminate what you're creating so like there's a creative process that you need to like actually protect so i've been working on a lot and i think that i just i i trust in the right time and maybe it's intuitive and i don't think it's going to be so far ahead but i'm i'm paying myself the the respect and rest i deserve like i have literally served everyone like i have worked so hard i've added a lot of value and i think right now it's just about you know giving myself the rest that i need in the space to bring forth the better innovation the creativity i think it's very important for every creative yeah but for you when it comes to you and observing you um i swear like you have had this consistent personality like you have this personality that's like it's never changed and you understand it just by reading your captions like since i was 18 i think following you till now you still i had to scale it back a little bit so i was like oh man you know what it was when the world started getting more offended by everything and I was like people are just they're not going to understand that I'm joking anymore.

2:20:12They're going to read into everything way too much. I want to bring it back though. But that's the thing right? I think that's the beauty of having your own Instagram. People forget your page is your page. Whoever is offended by it, it's like having your restaurant. If people don't like your food then go to the next restaurant. But that's an autonomy you have to have with your platform and I think social media is great. It's great. It's nice to connect people. I wouldn't be having this talk with you. There's a lot of benefits to technology. Main takeaway is to use it as a tool, to always have your authenticity, to know your values and yourself, because this isn't something your parents teach you.

2:20:53This isn't something that anywhere in academics teaches you. There are a lot of subjects to be explored that could expand you beyond your even imagination. um and of course like be very conscious and conscientious because the person who's conscientious which is the person who wants to do something right um they go to sleep very comfortably at night very comfortably like you don't have to think about their guilt if they did something right by someone and then the conscious person is always aware of what they're doing and the world around them yeah awesome we'll uh we'll leave it on that note thank you very much i appreciate that you're welcome we literally could just go on and on on but we are i think probably gonna get kicked out of the studio yeah i know and i had like a lot i want to talk about so maybe next time we could talk about why we're so um unfocused and why we're lonely in this lonely epidemic yeah wait do you do wait i'm sorry do you do those did you swear guys at me oh i was just like oh wait okay so do you do those um podcasts i think i've seen you do it once where like they're not with you but they're on remote yeah okay yeah you were just with that guy ironically i was at his retreat like 10 years ago dr uh yeah you know he was like the founder of ancient nutrition or something well yeah yeah yeah i was at his uh retreat but anyway that's for another time thank you for having me where can people find you uh right now maybe it's nowhere because you're not posting anything anymore uh you know i think i'll be back soon but right now i'm just really enjoying the state in which i'm growing at so you guys can find me on youtube and instagram at evolve nation yeah she'll be back with a bang yeah awesome bye